A fictional dogfight over the Himalayas

**phoggy** · 20 Feb 11,, 17:46

The powerful Suchoi Su-27 and its two-seat more advanced development, the indian Su-30 MKI, are for many aviation enthusiasts the epitome of a highly agile fighter aicraft.

Due to an invitation of the Indian Air Force (IAF) Lt. Col. Frank Simon of the German Air Force´s Fighter Wing 73 (Jagdgeschwader - JG 73 « Steinhoff ») had got a chance to get an idea how good the flight performance of this Flanker-C (NATO-Code) in comparison with the newest modern Eurofighter/Typhoon.

Lt. Col. Frank Simon, an Eurofighter-pilot of the German Air Force (GAF),
in front of an Indian Suchoi Su-30 MKI

Simon is the right man for such a task. He flew already the Mig-29 in the Air Force of the NVA (Nationale Volksarmee of ex East German)and now for the Fighter Wing 73 « Steinhoff » (JG 73 S). He is a very experienced pilot and is therefore completely qualified to fly the most modern Eurofighter of the German Air Force.

The powerful Suchoi Su-30 MKI (Multirole Export India) is a two-seat advanced variant of the Russian interceptor Suchoi Su-27 Flanker, which is equipped with the latest avionics, what come from different nations (Russia, Israel, France and India). It was produced in cooperation with the Indian aviation industry. Its thrust vector control allows the Suchoi being able to fly special maneuvers beyond the purely aerodynamic possibilities, the so-called post-stall area. The unimaginable Pugachev´s Cobra maneuvers have thoroughly impressed the audience on most major international air shows.
« In this respect, this flight with Su-30 MKI of IAF was a special for me and I was looking forward with great anticipation to this event », said Frank Simon, who was accompanied on the trip to India by Lt. Col. Frank Neurath of the German Air Force Test Center Manching (WTD-61).

When wearing the flying suit, Simon had got his first Déjà-Vue:
"The Indian Flanker pilots use the same Russian anti-G trousers that we had on the Mig-29. ".
Frank Simon got then the preparation briefing for the flight as a backseater from his Indian Suchoi-Pilot such as :
How to operate the ejection seat in emergency falls; a short presentation of the Flanker, the cockpit and the planned flight maneuvers and procedures.

Cobras over the Himalayas

Suchoi Su-30 MKI of the Indian Air Force (IAF)

Tornado F-3, Eurofighter and Suchoi Su-30 MKI

« In the air space for dogfight training with the breathtaking scenery of the Himalayas, my Indian pilot demonstrated to me how close and hard the Su-30 can fly and lets me then try for myself. We flew a variety of maneuvers with and without thrust vectoring, Immelmann, looping, and finally the famous cobra maneuver, too.».

And although the jets were still below the Himalayan peaks, the air was probably quite thin for the engines of the Suchoi, because the Indian pilot wanted « the cobra » only with the nose slanted downward and not upward. He maybe fear that the incoming air insufficient to carry the aircraft during the combustion of mixture of fuel and air.

« In the end we still practice how to fly the Flanker by using of the thrust vector control to out-maneuver and be able to shoot down a bandit, who attacked you from six. For this maneuver, you pull the aircraft sharply upward after a hard curve – it looks like a cobra.
At this steep attitude you get into a low speed range,in which the thrust vector control should be automatically activated to take countermeasures. So we now turn the thrust vector control - and the elegant nose of the Suchoi drops down to aim straight to the maybe-stunned opponent :
quick aiming with the helmet visor, and then firing an infrared air-to-air-missile on the opposite fighter - and that´s it. ». So much for theory.

Eurofighter would have an easy game !

Eurofighter / Typhoon of the brish RAF (Royal Air Force)

Spanish Eurofighter / Typhoon fighter at the Airshow Royal International Air Tattoo on 15.07.2007

« Then I ask the pilot, he should do this maneuver again and quickly put the nose back over the horizon in order to follow the enemy, if our opponent could recognize our intention and tries to climb over us for countermeasure. But that's what he failed to do it. The nose of the Flanker - despite thrust vector control – is too heavy for the planned maneuvers ! An Eurofighter should have then an easy time, because the Flanker is now sluggish in the air without speed !
We have tried the same maneuver once again at the end of the flight – with the same result. ».

In this case the result was not so amazing :
When the Suchoi has completed successfully the cobra maneuver and the opposite pilot should have not recognize in time this maneuver, then the Flanker was probably the winner of this fictional dogfight.

However, the Cobra maneuver – not depending on the type of the fighter or on the experiences of the pilot – can be quite guessed in advance by opposite experienced fighter pilots. The rest is done by the inertia of the mass : a heavy combat aircraft like the Flanker is disadvantaged by its high mass, when it flies a maneuver only based on its exceptional aerodynamics and by using of powerful engines with thrust vector control, which is normally impossible for the most other fighters.

Alone the fuel load of the Suchoi is over 9 tons, almost reaches the mass of an Eurofighter itself !
Flanker-C is clearly a heavy weight fighter, a Goliath : and even with its powerful engines it cannot overcome the limit of natural physical laws !

Strong opponent

Because the Flanker was originally designed as a heavy interceptor and went already into the army service, they cannot compete to the much smaller and lighter Eurofighter in the fictional, above described dogfight. Together with a better thrust to weight ratio, Eurofighter could be the winner of this fictional dogfight exercise over the Himalayas…

However, one must take into account when comparing all weapon systems that the presentation of such maneuvers is only a part of the whole picture. In reality, the dogfight would take place mostly in a BVR (Beyond Visual Range)-combat between two pilots who try to shoot down his opponent at distances outside the range of human eye.

And of course, the Suchoi Su-30 MKI – within or without the Cobra maneuver – is always a very agile fighter, which should not be underestimated. Experienced Indian pilots can now concentrate on flying new exceptional flying maneuvers with the thrust vector control.
Such exchanging projects of both Air Forces (IAF and GAF) are always benefit for all involved parties.

Norbert Thomas / Piz
German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe)

Source :

Norbert Thomas/Piz – German Air Force / FLIEGER REVUE, Nr. 02-2011

**Phoenix10** · 20 Feb 11,, 18:50

Here is an aviation week article about Red Flag, during which Su-30s went to post stall maneuvering, lost too much energy, and paid the price. I'm sure that many on this forum have seen this before. I mention it here again because it is related to the first post.

Key points (not that this is news to anyone):
- AESA radar is very important
- IFF is very important
- Having a super-maneuverable aircraft alone means little, pilot training and experience are huge

USAF Pilot Critiques Red Flag Action | AVIATION WEEK

"Indian pilots flying Su-30MKIs are extremely professional, but they're still learning how to best fight with their new aircraft.

That opinion comes from an unidentified, senior F-15 pilot taped while briefing senior retired U.S. Air Force officers about the most recent Red Flag exercise. The video was made available online at YouTube.com.

The French pilots flying the new Dassault Rafale appeared to be there to collect electronic intelligence on the Indian aircraft, contends the USAF pilot, who wears an Air Force Weapons School graduate patch.

The French were originally going to bring the older Mirage 2000-5 until they discovered the Indians were bringing their new Su-30MKIs, the pilot says. They then switched and brought their Rafales with more sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment.

Once at Red Flag, "90 percent of the time they followed the Indians so when they took a shot or got shot" they would take a quick shot of their own and then leave," he said. "They never came to any merges," which starts the dogfighting portion of any air-to-air combat. He asserts that French pilots followed the same procedure during Desert Storm and Peace Keeping exercises. When U.S. aircrews were flying operations, the French would fly local sorties while "sucking up all the trons" to see how U.S. electronics, like radars, worked, according to the pilot.

He praised the Indians as extremely professional and said they had no training rule violations. However, they "killed a lot of friendlies" because they were tied to a Russian-made data link system that didn't allow them to see the picture of the battlefield available to everyone else. The lack of combat identification of the other aircraft caused confusion.

But the U.S. apparently isn't ignorant of the Su-30MKI's radar either.

The Su-30 electronically scanned radar is not as accurate as the U.S.-built active electronically scanned radar carried by the F-22 and some F-15s. Also, "it paints less, sees less" and is not as discriminating.

He praised the F-22 as the next great dogfighter. But he faulted the fact that it carries too few missiles and contends that the on-board cannon could be a life-saver, particularly against aircraft like the MiG-21 Bison flown by the Indians. It has a small radar cross section, as well as an Israeli-made F-16 radar and jammer. The latter makes them "almost invisible to legacy F-15C and F-16 radars" until the aerial merge or until it fires one of its Archer, active radar missiles, the U.S. pilot says.

Against the much larger RCS Su-30MKI, the F-16s and F-15s won consistently during the first three days of air-to-air combat, he continues. However, that was the result of trying to immediately go into a post-stall, thrust-vectored turn when attacked. The turn then creates massive drag and the aircraft starts sinking and losing altitude. "It starts dropping so fast you don't have to go vertical [first]. The low-speed tail slide allowed the U.S. aircraft to dive from above and "get one chance to come down to shoot," the pilot says. "You go to guns and drill his brains out." The Su-30 is jamming your missiles so...you go to guns and drill his brains out."

U.S. pilots conclude that the Su-30MKI is "not [an F-22] Raptor," he further says. "That was good for us to find out." But when the Indian pilots really learn to fight their new aircraft - "they were too anxious to go to the post-stall maneuver," he says-- the USAF pilot predicts that they would regularly defeat the F-16C Block 50 and the F-15C with conventional radar.

A final weakness in the Su-30MKI was its engine's vulnerability to foreign object damage which required them to space takeoffs a minute apart and slowed mission launches."

**phoggy** · 20 Feb 11,, 22:51

Thank you for the article, Sir.
It´s very interesting to know a little bit about the Achilles´weak spot at Pugachev´s Cobra maneuver of Suchoi Flanker at dogfights in post-stall area.

Lt. Col Frank Simon was also one of Mig-29-Pilots of the German Air Force (Bundesluftwaffe), who had participated in joint Dissimilar Air Combat Training (DACT) exercises in 1997 with F-16s of the USAF´s 457th squadron at Forth Worth. In those simulated dogfights the GAF´s pilots had firstly advantages by using of the HMS (Helmet Mounted Weapons Sight). The HMS was a great help, allowing the Germans to achieve a lock on any target the pilot could see within the missile field of view, including those almost 45 degrees off boresight. In contrast, the USAF´s F-16s were only able to lock onto targets in a narrow window directly in front of the aircraft’s nose.
It was not until late 2003 that the USAF and US Navy achieved Initial Operational Capability of the Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS).

**Chogy** · 21 Feb 11,, 14:20

I've always enjoyed that Red Flag briefing YouTube because it is both straightforward (blunt), and it helps defeat the media and airshow generated myth of the "unconquerable" extreme AOA fighter.

**Stitch** · 21 Feb 11,, 17:53

Originally Posted by Chogy

I've always enjoyed that Red Flag briefing YouTube because it is both straightforward (blunt), and it helps defeat the media and airshow generated myth of the "unconquerable" extreme AOA fighter.

Chogy - Without violating OPSEC, what was your strategy for defeating AOA fighters? Lock 'em up early on, before the merge?

**Jimmy** · 21 Feb 11,, 23:38

With that bigass radar up front, that's ALWAYS the gameplan for F-15s.

**Chogy** · 22 Feb 11,, 14:31

Shoot 'em with a sidewinder from 5 miles?

If a thrust-vectoring super-fighter intentionally enters an extreme AOA regime, he has given up almost all of his options, has handed you the vertical on a platter, and has made himself enormously vulnerable to IR missiles, the gun, pretty much any weapon. And real combat is not a sterile 1 V 1.

Assuming he survived the search-sort-shoot regime and a merge is inevitable, mutual support is what makes such maneuvering so dangerous to the high AOA guy. He might be able to temporarily stiff-arm one fighter, but not the others that will invariably be in the neighborhood.

Lead: "Engaged neutral with a guy doing a cobra."
Two: "Tally ho, Pitch right."
8 seconds later...
Two: "Fox two kill the guy fluttering about at 15,000 feet.
Lead: "Bug out East, push it up."
Two: "Toop."

About like that.